RAVENLOONATIK.COM

Here we go again folks… when the stupid flakes fly (Snow)…

Let’s see what I encounter almost every day on the streets of Calgary.

1) On a 4-lane road, it’s almost always faster to drive in the right hand lane. Why? Because apparently Calgary teaches people that the left lane is for going the same speed or SLOWER than people in the right lane. Everywhere else, the left lane is for PASSING!

2) People stop when there is no reason to stop. Is it only in Calgary where people hallucinate stop signs?

3) Onramps to highways have an apparent imaginary speed limit of 50 kilometres per hour to merge onto a 100 kilometre road. Can people in Calgary not realize that it’s much easier and safer to merge at 90-100 kilometres than it is at 50?

4) If a speed limit sign says 80 km, it must really mean 50 km, or 60 km.
I could go on…

It’s not just an “unwritten rule” that the left lane is for passing. And you’d be surprised, I saw a piece on 20/20 a few years ago about how people who go 10-25 km under the speed limit CAUSE more accidents than people going over the speed limit.

What makes drivers here so incompetent? This is a city of (now) 1 million people.

OH! I know!! It’s the 200,000 or so imported workers from down East, or the wheat boys and gals from Central Canada that found jobs here in booming Calgary!!

Okay… so here goes my friggin Rant on the dumbasses who drive their SUV’s in the winter like is a balmy + 25 degrees celcius outside…

4 Wheel Drive and Snow (Physics)
Repeat after me: 4 wheel “GO” does not equal 4 wheel “STOP”.

A quick rant to explain something to you SUV Drivers, most of whom are clueless menaces on the road. I say most, rather than all, on the statistical possibility that one of you has some intelligence and driving skills. So far, this assumption has proven excessively optimistic, but hey, I’m a positive kinda guy.

On the Deerfoot, snow accumulation was about 2 inches. (not a helluva lot)
By staying in the center of the middle or right lanes where traffic was heaviest, you could make sure your tires were, for the most part, in contact with actual pavement, as opposed to the white stuff. The left lane and the extreme right lanes were less travelled and had a few centimetres of snow covering them.

Here’s where things got interesting:
Many SUV’s and quite few high end cars (BMW’s & Audi Quattros) were hauling ass along the left lanes. I may have a heavy right foot, but I do not go 130 km/hr in the snow — these idiots did.

I got to witness a dozen or so fender benders along the way 14 km trip home: The most memorable was seeing the results of a Nissan SUV spin out, and in an unrelated accident, watching in more or less slow motion, a Hummer (HAHAHA!) careening into the cement guard rail.

(Seriously, how bad a driver must you be to slam the “vehicle that can go anywhere and do anything” into a wall?)

Here’s the physics of the situation: 4 wheel drive is your method of locomotion. It’s how you go. But here’s the… apparent unknown secret:

It has absolutely nothing to do with how you stop; That’s an entirely different system within your vehicle you dumbasses!

But 4 wheel GO does not equal 4 wheel STOP.
It has no impact on halting your momentum. Can you comprehend that?

Oh, sure, if you drive a manual… and downshift properly… in some situations, you can use the engine to control wheel slip and improve control. But seriously, how many SUV owners drive manual transmissions?
And of those who do, how many of them know how to drive? Apparently far too few.

If anything, 4 wheel drive merely allows you to get yourself into more dangerous situations. I saw a Porsche 911 fishtailing all over the road. He was aware of his limitations in the snow and was going 30 kph.
His torquey, rear wheel drive system had little in the way of traction in the snow… and he knew it. He crept along in the right lane and still ran into some trouble.

Now back to our 130 kph snow fools:

In the event of loss of traction, (not too hard to imagine in 2 inches of snow) you are merely a two tonne hunk of steel sliding across a frictionless surface until you either

A)   regain directional control or

B)   run into some mass which stops you.

Your Anti-Lock Brake System (ABS) is USELESS when your tires cannot make contact with the pavement. Modulating brake lock up when snowplaning on a 2 inch cushion of white stuff does you no good whatsoever.

The technical term for this phenomena is called “Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

A message to you SUV (and all wheel drive) owners:
Understand the limits of your vehicle. Learn to drive in inclement weather. You’ll be doing your families, and the people you share the roads with, a huge favor.

End Rant.

No comments

My Son shared this with me and I feel it will give endless amounts of entertainment for all to relate to… I am guilty of at least half of these…

LMAO

1. Turn signals will give away your next move. A confident Alberta driver avoids using them.

2. Under no circumstance should you maintain a safe distance between you and
the car in front of you, because the space will be filled in by somebody
else, putting you in an even more dangerous situation.

3. The faster you drive through a red light, the less of a chance you have
of getting hit.

4. Warning! Never come to a complete stop at a stop sign. No one expects it
and it will result in your being rear-ended.

5. Never get in the way of an older car that needs extensive bodywork,
especially with B.C. or Sask, plates. With no insurance, the other operator
has nothing to lose.

6. Braking is to be done as hard and late as possible to ensure that your
ABS kicks in, giving a vigorous, foot massage as the brake pedal violently
pulsates. For those of you without ABS, it’s a chance to strengthen your leg
muscles.

7. Never pass on the left when you can pass on the right. It’s a good way to
prepare other drivers entering the highway.

8. Speed limits are arbitrary figures; given only as a suggestion and are
not enforceable in Alberta during rush hour, especially in Calgary.

9. Just because you’re in the left lane and have no room to speed up or move
over doesn’t mean that an Albertan driver flashing his high beams behind you
doesn’t think he can go faster in your spot.

10. Always brake and rubberneck when you see an accident or even someone
changing a tire. This is seen as a sign of respect for the victim.

11. Learn to swerve abruptly without signaling. Alberta is the home of
high-speed slalom-driving; thanks to the Department of Public Works, which
puts pot-holes in key locations to test drivers’ reflexes and keep them
alert.

12. It is tradition in Alberta to honk your horn at cars in front of you
that do not move within three milliseconds of the light turning green.

13. To avoid injury in the event of a collision or rollover, it is important
to exit your vehicle through the windshield right away. Wearing your seat
belt will only impede your hi-velocity escape from danger.

14. Remember that the goal of every Alberta driver is to get ahead of the
pack by whatever means necessary.

15. In Alberta, ‘flipping the bird’ is considered a polite salute. This
gesture should always be returned.

Thank You From,
The Alberta Registrar of Motor Vehicles

No comments

I kept reading these bullsh*t horoscopes… I thought any moron can do this… so I thought I’d try it!

Aries (March 21 - April 19)
Good time to learn to play the harmonica. If you get one of those coat hanger thingies to hang around your neck, you can even play it while you’re typing!

Taurus (April 20 - May 20)
A door-to-door arms dealer will stop by today. Although you won’t be entirely sure how you let yourself get talked into it, you’ll soon be the first on the block to own a rocket launcher.

Gemini (May 21 - June 20)
Excellent day, today. Unless today is your 15th birthday, of course, in which case you’re destined to have a particularly embarassing episode involving a cat and an argyle sock.

Cancer (June 21 - July 22)
Good day to excavate. You will find the ruins of an ancient civilization, and become famous.

Leo (July 23 - August 22)
You will contemplate nothingness today, but somethingness will keep intruding upon your thoughts. You’re psychotic.

Virgo (August 23 - September 22)
Someone will turn a cold shoulder to you, and your feelings will be hurt. You’ll get even by turning a tepid elbow to them, later. Just don’t let it escalate to the blazing ankles stage, is all.

Libra (September 22 - October 22)
Spiders will be especially troublesome today. Chances are only fair that you will make it through the day without tangling with one or more giant Amazonian tarantulas. Keep a stick within reach, is my advice. A big stick.

Scorpio (October 23 - November 21)
You will write a newspaper article about the Internet today. Why not? Everybody else has.

Sagittarius (November 22 - December 21)
Happy Frog Day!! Let’s hear it for our little amphibious friends!

Capricorn (December 22 - January 20)
Despite having a brilliant mind and a lot of terrific friends, you find yourself stagnating in a quiet backwater, with financial success nowhere in sight. You will go into business for yourself, however, making frozen Perogies based on your grandmother’s recipe, and will become rich and famous. Your grandmother will wack you with her umbrella.

Aquarius (January 21 - February 18)
You will believe a completely rediculous hoax about a computer virus today, and everyone will tease you mercilessly. Especially me.

Pisces (February 19 - March 20)
Today you will discover that you are capable of “channelling”, when you start spouting ancient Sumerian curses at a short little dork who cuts you off in traffic. You will start taking notes in cuneiform.

3 comments

We lost a planet from our solar system and it couldn’t get Jon Benet Ramsey off the front page. Talk about lack of respect for a celestial body! I grew up being told that there were nine planets in the solar system.
It wasn’t as big a deal as knowing all ten Provinces and (then) two Territories, (now three) but it was very high on any educator’s list of basic facts that most students should know back then. If you could name the planets in order from Mercury, which was closest to the sun, out to Pluto, you were really doing well. If you could name all the moons, of which Pluto has three so far, you were into serious geekhood.

Pluto, which was “discovered” in 1930, was so much a part of our culture that Mickey Mouse (a creation of the ’30s himself) had a dog named for the ninth planet. I never did figure out why Goofy, also a dog, happened to be Mickey’s pal and knew how to talk , but Mickey kept Pluto as a pet. I guess that might have been the first hint that the outermost outer planet might not be long for our world.

No, Osama did not build a suitcase bomb and blow up the smallest planet into asteroids. Back in the 1800s, Ceres, the largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter had status as a planet, too. Ceres, which is even smaller than Pluto had the misfortune of being the largest object among thousands circling the sun. Not long after its discovery, Ceres got demoted to asteroid status for about a hundred and fifty years until some astronomers decided to try to bring it up to the majors again in 2001 along with a big icy object with the unromantic label UB 313. Instead of promoting Ceres, the association tightened their definition of planet and wound up creating this whole bogus category — “the dwarf planet”.

Basically Ceres got brought up out of the asteroid league and poor Pluto got sent down in the process to join Ceres and UB 313 as part of the dwarf division. To add insult to injury, Pluto’s largest moon, Chiron, which is almost as big as Pluto itself (with two objects, how the hell do you tell which is orbiting which?) also got bumped into dwarfdom.

To have your own moon catch up with you has to be the ultimate in being dissed if you’ve gotten used to being a planet. One could, however, look at it another way. While Pluto was a planet for seventy-five of our years, in Pluto time it was like a third of a year, so maybe they never got all that used to being a planet anyway. Football season’s not even gotten to the playoffs on Pluto. This was one place in the solar system where that whole compound interest thing totally sucked.

Aside from being a serious insult to dwarves or little people, I’m wondering what the Hades this means? Does this mean Pluto can’t get into galactic bars now? Did Pluto lose its right to vote in interplanetary elections? And how can you have moons and still not be a planet? I just never thought astronomers were exactly the sort of guys and (girls) who whispered, “Well, to tell you the truth, size does matter.”

Actually, that isn’t quite true — they say it’s not the size, but how it orbits. See, there are always other ways to please astronomers. For about 20 earth years out of 229, it crosses into Neptune’s orbit. In the old days, all you had to be was a big rock orbiting the sun. Now, they’ve got all these requirements — you have to orbit, be round, win the swimsuit and talent competitions. In the meantime, apparently Pluto’s stopped speaking to Neptune entirely, which is very sad given that we might not even know about Pluto had it not been for Neptune.

If you don’t know the story, Neptune was the first planet discovered by implication instead of visual observation. Although the three-body gravitational problem remains something of a mystery, Neptune’s existence was predicted because Johanne Gottfried Galle found eccentricities in Uranus’s orbit. I can just see al the scientists giggling, “There’s something weird about Uranus. Eeewww!”

In turn, they soon figured out that Neptune moved funny too, and people started looking for Pluto. I’m still thinking about how this is going to mess up all those astrologers. It just doesn’t sound the same to get told that your moon is in dwarf planet.

Anyway, Clyde Tombaugh started doing time lapse photographs looking for the planet implied by Uranus and became the first American to get credit for discovering a planet in 1930. The only problem was that Pluto was much too small to be the missing planet. When I was a kid, no one knew how big Pluto actually was. It wasn’t until the 1980s that they figured out for sure that it was the smallest “planet” in the solar system and the one furthest from the sun. Talk about your runt complex. Anyway, now that the drug testing’s done on Pluto, Tombaugh is just the first American to discover a dwarf planet. Even more amazing, Tombaugh’s widow is still alive. Now the lady can’t get into her local observatory without a reservation anymore.

What if there turns out to be intelligent life on Pluto? Are we going to have to say,”Sorry we can’t get excited about you guys because you’re not from a real planet?”

Of course, the hypothetical beings of Pluto, who maybe really could look like Mickey Mouse’s dog, could come back at us and say

“You know what? We’ve been watching you longer than you’ve been watching us and Earth doesn’t count because you don’t have real intelligent life, just some sort of dwarf intellect. Give it another couple years and do what you’re doing and there’s going to be an asteroid belt between Venus and Mars and you want even be a dwarf planet, you’ll be like blastocyst planet. Woof, woof.”

In the meantime, can you imagine all the lawsuits now? There are now all these kids who got a C in science because they could only name eight planets and then didn’t get into the college of their choice. Not only that, the outer edge of our solar system just shrunk by several million miles. They must be in a frenzy at the interplanetary title company.

What next? Someone’s going to tell me that Canada isn’t a democracy any longer?

No comments